Liberian President, Samuel Doe was the first...

Liberian President, Samuel Doe was the first world leader to be tortured on camera before being executed and his body desecrated on September 9, 1990. 

In 1980, Samuel Kanyon Doe, a 28-year-old Master Sergeant, and his accomplices brutally murdered President William R. Tolbert Jr, ending 133 years of rule by Americo-Liberians.

Thirteen members of the Cabinet were publicly executed ten days later. Having discarded with Tolbert, Doe became Liberia’s first president of “exclusive indigenous heritage”.

In the subsequent decade, President Doe inflamed ethnic politics before he met an even less dignified end than his predecessor.

At the end of the Cold War, his previously unwavering support from the U.S. evaporated and, as Liberia erupted into civil war, Doe was left vulnerable.

On September 9, 1990, Doe was captured on a visit to the recently deployed ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in Monrovia by the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) led by Prince Johnson.

They brought Doe before Johnson, stripped him naked except for his underpants, and made a video recording where they cut off his ears, fingers, and toes.

Hours later, he was dead, although Liberia’s civil war would continue for another 13 years. Credit:HistoryLand